The Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia on Wednesday for the third night of its convention, and CNN’s Reality Check Team put the speakers’ statements and assertions to the test.
The team of reporters, researchers and editors across CNN listened throughout the speeches and selected key statements, rating them true; mostly true; true, but misleading; false; or it’s complicated.
Crime, illegal immigration
Reality Check: Obama on crime and illegal immigration rates
By Kate Grise and Sonam Vashi, CNN
President Barack Obama accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of fearmongering without looking at the facts. “It doesn’t matter to him that illegal immigration and the crime rate are as low as they’ve been in decades, because he’s not offering any real solutions to those issues,” Obama said. “He’s just offering slogans, and he’s offering fear.”
Let’s break down his claims about illegal immigration and crime.
As we reported last week on a similar claim made by Obama, the best measure that we have of how many people try to enter the country illegally is how many of those people are apprehended each year, according to the United States Border Patrol.
In 1986, the number of apprehensions peaked and U.S. Border Patrol picked up more than 1.6 million undocumented immigrants. In the 1990s, more than 1 million people trying to cross the border illegally were apprehended each year.
During President George W. Bush’s tenure from 2001-2009, on average, 1 million undocumented workers were picked up each year.
The numbers of people apprehended crossing the border illegally has been on the decline since Obama took office, and in 2015, U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 337,117 people, the lowest number since 1971.
It is, of course, very difficult to check the total number of people who have tried to cross the border in any given year. The number of apprehensions gives us a good idea, but it also assumes that border patrol’s resources and effectiveness have remained somewhat constant over the years. There is also no way to know how many people crossing the border illegally eluded arrest or how aggressive Border Patrol agents are with apprehensions at any given time.
In the early 1990s, there were more than 4,000 Border Patrol agents and fewer physical barriers on the border. Today, the number of agents staffing the border patrol has risen to more than 20,000. Since the 1990s, Border Patrol has focused on deterring people from trying to cross the border in the first place. Customs and Border Protection says that their expanded capability has “substantially deterred illegal entries,” and they say that “the number of Border Patrol encounters with people trying to enter the country illegally dropped by 78% between fiscal years 2000 and 2012.”
The number of people apprehended by Border Patrol has been on a general decline since 2005, though there was a slight increase between 2012 and 2014. Since Obama took office in fiscal year 2009, there has been a 39% decrease in apprehensions of people who tried to cross the border illegally.
There have been, however, large fluctuations in the number of children and their families and unaccompanied children apprehended on the U.S.-Mexico border. Between fiscal years 2013-2014, there are there was a huge spike in the number of unaccompanied children and family unit subjects apprehended by Border Patrol. The trend slowed the following year, and apprehensions picked back up in the first half of fiscal year 2016 when there were almost as many unaccompanied children and family units apprehended as there were in all of fiscal year 2015.
The reason that people are crossing the border is shifting, said Donald Kerwin, director of the Center for Migration Studies of New York. Fewer people are coming to seek work and more people are seeking refuge from violence or because they are afraid for their lives, which could explain the increase in families and children being apprehended trying to cross the border illegally.
We rate Obama’s claim as true based on the best metric we have to measure how many people may be crossing the border, even though it is far from perfect.
As for the President’s claim about crime: the FBI measures violent crime, which includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. The violent crime rate in 2014 was the lowest it’s been since the mid-1990s and it has decreased by 15% between 2009, when Obama took office, and 2014, the latest year for which full data is available. The homicide rate in 2014 was 4.5 per 100,000 people, which was the lowest rate since 1964.
But let’s look at larger trends of U.S. violence. Murders increased in the 1960s and 70s, fell midway during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, peaked in 1991, and then began a sharp decline until the present, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The overall violent crime rate has also been steadily declining since the 1990s, according to FBI data.
So, violent crime and homicide rates were already on a downward trend before Obama took office. It’s not fair to credit his presidency for any increases or decreases in those rates without noting that larger trend, but Obama is true in saying that violent crime is lower now than in previous decades. However, as we noted last week, preliminary data for 2015 shows that there was an uptick in the violent crime rate nationally and in homicides for some major cities. We don’t have full data for last year or 2016.
Guns
Reality Check: Trump and guns
By Jamie Crawford, CNN National Security Producer
“Trump says that in his first hour in the Oval Office, he would roll back safeguards we already have,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said. “And even more sinister, Trump said that by the end of his first day in office, he’ll mandate that every school in America allow guns in their classrooms.”
Trump has been adamant in his criticism of gun free zones at schools, and at one point earlier in the campaign, seemed to endorse a blanket call to eliminate all such zones. He clarified those comments in May after Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said Trump was calling for a mandate that “every school in America allow guns in classrooms.”
In reaction to those comments, Trump said, “I don’t want to have guns in classrooms, although in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms, frankly,” although he conceded his proposal would allow guns into schools.
“The way she said it meant like every student should be sitting there carrying guns,” Trump said. “If trained people had guns, you wouldn’t have the carnage that you’ve had.”
American University law professor and CNN contributor Steve Vladek said Trump can’t “mandate” every school in America to allow guns in their classrooms.
“He certainly can’t mandate that by himself,” Vladek said. “A harder question is whether Congress could pass a law imposing such a mandate. I suspect reasonable folks will disagree on the answer to that, but there’s not much to any argument that he could do it by executive order alone.”
Based on Trump’s comments in May that he did not “want to have guns in classrooms,” and Murphy’s assertion that Trump would “mandate” that every school in America allow guns in their classrooms, we rate that claim as false.
Just before those remarks, Murphy said that Trump would roll back existing safeguards on guns enacted by Obama during Trump’s “first hour” in office. Trump did say the following during an address to the National Rifle Association in May: “We will unsign lots of different things, including some of those terrible executive orders. Believe me, they are going to be unsigned so fast. They will be unsigned the first hour that I’m in office.”
While Trump also referenced education and immigration during the course of those remarks on executive orders, his effusive defense of the Second Amendment as well leads us to rate Murphy’s assertion as true.
Climate change
Reality Check: Republicans and climate change
By Kate Grise and Justin Gamble, CNN
California Gov. Jerry Brown slammed the Republican Party for ignoring climate change issues at their convention last week.
“Last week at the Republican Convention, for 76 long and painful minutes, Trump conjured up a host of dark threats, but never once mentioned the words ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming.’ What do you expect?” he said. “Trump represents a party with officials that have banned state employees from even using those words in Florida, and who knows where else.”
We reviewed what the Republican presidential nominee said, and he did not mention climate change or global warming during his speech on the last night of his party’s convention.
As Brown pointed out, state officials in Florida have been accused of directing employees not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” according to an investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.
According to the report, the unwritten guidelines were communicated with employees in the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shortly after Gov. Rick Scott began his first term in 2011.
Many former and current DEP employees told the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting that they were told not to use the words in official communications, emails or reports.
Spokeswomen for both DEP and Scott’s office denied the reports and said that there is no policy on this.
Although there may not be a policy, an investigation showed state employees were told not to use those words. We rate Brown’s claims as true.
Reality Check: California’s prosperity under tough climate laws
By Kate Grise, CNN
Brown held up his home state as a shining example of a place where tough climate laws have not hurt businesses.
“We have solar, wind, zero-emission cars, energy efficiency, and yes, a price on carbon,” he said. “We’re proving that even with the toughest climate laws in the country, our economy in California is growing faster than almost any nation in the whole world.”
California’s tough environmental regulations include limits on greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors of the economy – energy, transportation, waste and national resources, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency.
Thanks in large part to the high-tech boom and a statewide surge in employment, California is the world’s sixth-largest economy, according to figures from Brown’s administration.
The California Department of Finance used GDP data from the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to determine their standing amongst other countries.
When adjusted for the high cost of living in California, the state’s ranking drops to 11th, according to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.
According to the BEA, California’s economy grew 4.1% in 2015, tying with Oregon for the state with the most growth.
According to International Monetary Fund estimates, 50 countries had GDP growth greater than 4.1% in 2015: Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Fiji, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Lao PDR, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zambia.
The United States’ GDP growth was 2.568% in 2015, according to IMF estimates.
While California’s economy is growing at double the pace of the United States as a whole and much faster than many developed countries, we have to rate his claim as false. There are at least 50 countries — many developing nations — whose economies are growing faster than California’s.
Abortion
Reality Check: Hogue on abortion
By Sonam Vashi, CNN
Activist Ilyse Hogue addressed abortion and women’s reproductive health in her speech.
“About one in three American women have abortions by the age of 45, and the majority are mothers just trying to take care of the families they already have,” she said.
These stats are from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization that supports abortion rights and surveys abortion patients every six to eight years. Using data from its 2008 survey, Guttmacher estimated that one in three women have an abortion by age 45, and that 61% of women having abortions already had at least one child, with 34% having two or more children. Guttmacher also notes that only half of all abortions are represented in their studies, as rates tend to be underreported.
The “one in three” statistic is widely used but it’s important to note that the data is a bit old. Abortions in the U.S. have been on the decline since a peak in the 1990s, and Guttmacher later reported that between 2008 and 2011, the abortion rate fell by 13%. Updated data from Guttmacher is not expected until 2017, according to The Washington Post.
While the numbers are pretty old, the dataset is the most complete and up-to-date available, so we rate Hogue’s claim true.
Hogue went on to attack Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who she said “led the charge to defund Planned Parenthood, pushed to let hospitals turn a woman away if she needs an abortion to save her life, and signed a bill with some of the most outrageous abortion restrictions in the country. He has even said he can’t wait to send Roe v. Wade ‘into the ash heap of history.'”
Pence is well-known for being a relentless opponent of abortion.
As a congressman, Pence did indeed lead a crusade to defund the reproductive health organization, introducing bills that would have defunded any organization that offered abortions for three legislative sessions in a row. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of abortion services. In 2011, he went after Planned Parenthood specifically, introducing an amendment to a bill to prohibit federal funding for the group.
This year, the Indiana governor signed one of the most expansive anti-abortion laws in the country, a ban on women having abortions because the fetus is diagnosed with Down syndrome or other disabilities. Critics of the law said that some pregnancies that would have to be carried to term under the law could be complicated or dangerous to the women. The law also requires that aborted fetuses or miscarriages be buried or cremated. Some women Republican lawmakers, who were generally anti-abortion, opposed the bill, which they said would lead to more “back-room” abortions or would lead women to lie to their doctors, according to The New York Times.
A federal judge filed a preliminary injunction against the law in June, suspending it from going into effect, because it may violate Supreme Court precedents.
And when he was in Congress, Pence did say that he longs “for the day that Roe v. Wade is sent to the ash heap of history, when we move past the broken hearts and the broken lives of the past 38 years.”
While Hogue’s statements are laced with her opinions, her basic facts are true.
Employment
Reality Check: Detroit employment
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said his city is being reborn. He said Clinton knows how to create an economy in which everyone benefits.
“Jobs are returning to Detroit. New auto plants and businesses are opening. Detroit’s unemployment rate has been cut in half. People are moving back,” Duggan said.
In May, Detroit’s unemployment rate was 9.8%, down from a high of 18.8% in July 2014, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. So the rate wasn’t quite cut in half but it’s close enough to be rated true.
And it’s true that there are more people working in the city. In May, just under 219,000 city residents had jobs, up from less than 204,000 in January, 2011.
There are some new businesses coming to town, including those in the auto industry. In May, auto supplier Flex-N-Gate announced it was opening a new plant in the city. But the city still has a long way to go to regain its economic strength. Still, Duggan’s claim of new auto business is true.
But it doesn’t seem people are moving back. The city had just over 677,000 residents in 2015, according to Census data. That’s down more than 3,000 from the year before and down nearly 37,000 from 2010. So we rate that claim as false.
Reality Check: Trump hiring foreign workers
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg ripped into Trump, saying New Yorkers know a con when they see one.
“He says he wants to put Americans back to work, but he games the U.S. visa system so he can hire temporary foreign workers at low wages,” Bloomberg said.
CNN investigated Trump’s hiring practices at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in South Florida. The U.S. Department of Labor confirmed that between 2013 and the fall of 2015, the resort posted 250 seasonal job openings and filled just four of those jobs with American workers, according to the investigation by CNN’s Drew Griffin, Scott Bronstein, Curt Devine and Adam Mintzer.
The club requested the rest of the staff be temporarily imported through the federal government’s H-2B visa process.
Trump has made the case that he couldn’t find American workers. “It’s almost impossible to get help,” the Republican presidential nominee told CNN in February. “And part of the reason you can’t get American people is they want full-time jobs.”
The Department of Labor requires proof that an employer seeking to import workers tried but failed to attract qualified U.S. workers.
Records show Mar-a-Lago appears to have done the bare minimum required by law. According to a CNN analysis of hundreds of pages of Labor Department documents, Mar-a-Lago did not place advertisements in the area’s largest newspaper. Instead, ads were placed in a local paper with a small circulation and the ads were routinely posted for just two days, the minimum required by law.
On Trump gaming the U.S. visa system to hire foreign workers, we rate Bloomberg’s claim true.
But whether Trump paid low wages is another matter.
CNN reported that Mar-a-Lago positions paid roughly $10 an hour for maids and housekeepers, going up to $13 an hour for cooks and about $11 for waiters and waitresses.
Trump paid about the same or slightly more than the typical wage for that area of Florida for those positions. The median wage for maids was $9.81 an hour in 2015, while restaurant cooks earned $13.08 an hour and waiters and waitresses $9.41 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
We rate that part of Bloomberg’s claim false.
Reality Check: Worker productivity
By Chip Grabow, CNN
Vice President Joe Biden talked about America’s greatness, especially as an engine of economic growth.
“Not only do we have the largest economy in the world. We have the strongest economy in the world. We have the most productive workers in the world,” Biden said.
America having the most productive workers in the world is a favorite trope among politicians. Unfortunately, recent statistics don’t quite support the claim.
In a 2014 report based on data collected by the Organization for Economic CoOperation and Development, of the countries being compared, the United States placed third in a ranking of hourly productivity. Germany ranked first, followed by France. The list measured productivity by dividing annual hours worked by a country’s GDP.
Additionally, productivity growth has slowed in recent years, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. After averaging 1.9% growth from 2004 to 2009, it slowed to 0.6% per year on average from 2010 to 2015.
Based on the data, we rate Biden’s claim false.
Reality Check: Trump’s economic plans costing jobs and adding to national debt
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said Trump tells people to believe him and then stiffs them. The Virginia senator then listed several others who said Trump’s economic plans would be bad for the nation.
“Don’t take it from me. Take it from … John McCain’s former economic adviser, who estimates Trump’s promises would cost America 3.5 million jobs. Or the independent analysts that found Trump’s tax plan, a gift to the wealthy and big corporations, would rack up $30 trillion in debt,” Kaine said.
Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics’ chief economist who advised McCain during his 2008 presidential bid, found that the nation would sink into a downturn longer than the Great Recession, about 3.5 million Americans would lose their jobs, unemployment would jump back to 7%, home prices would fall and the stock market would plummet if Trump were elected president.
Trump’s campaign disputed the analysis. Economist and Trump supporter Peter Navarro called it “garbage” and pointed out that Zandi has donated to Clinton. He countered that Trump’s tax cuts would boost growth, curbing illegal immigration won’t hurt U.S. workers and Trump’s tough talk on trade won’t start a trade war.
Still, we rate that claim as true because Kaine correctly attributed the statistics to McCain’s former economic adviser.
On Trump adding $30 trillion to the national debt, Kaine is citing a December report from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. It found that Trump’s tax plan would reduce federal revenue by $24.5 trillion over 20 years, which is a longer window than is typically cited. The center noted that any increase in economic growth would not be enough to counter the revenue loss. Instead, unprecedented spending cuts would be needed.
We rate this claim as true.
Wages
Reality Check: Trump saying wages are too high
By Sonam Vashi, CNN
Former Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley said Trump “has actually said quote, ‘Wages are too high.’ Wages are too high? Really Donald?”
We checked a similar claim earlier this week, when AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made the same claim.
At a November 10 debate, in a response to a question about raising the minimum wage, Trump said, “Taxes too high, wages too high, we’re not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is.”
The next day, he repeated that statement on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” When pressed on whether the federal minimum wage is livable, he said, “Our taxes are too high. Our wages are too high. We have to compete with other countries.”
But the next day, on Fox News, Trump walked it back a bit. “Whether it’s taxes or wages, if they’re too high, we’re not going to be able to compete with other countries,” he said. Since last fall, he has reiterated the idea that Americans should “get more” in wages, saying in May that he doesn’t “know how people make it on $7.25.”
Maybe Trump was referring to a minimum wage that’s just right.
Trump did say that he thought wages were too high, but O’Malley doesn’t note that Trump has shifted his position. So we rate O’Malley’s claim mostly true.
ISIS
Reality Check: ISIS using Trump in advertisements
By Kate Grise, CNN
Retired Rear Adm. John Hutson repeated an often-used Clinton campaign line to attack Trump.
“Donald Trump is a walking, talking recruiting poster for terrorists. That’s not hyperbole … ISIS literally used Trump in a commercial,” he said.
When we checked this claim in December, we rated it false because there was no evidence at that time of ISIS using videos of Trump for recruitment, as Clinton had claimed.
As we reported then, it is difficult to speak to all of ISIS’ communication: Some of it happens in the open on social media sites, but other communications are hidden in what’s known as the “Dark web.”
Now, however, there is evidence that ISIS has released a propaganda video that features Trump.
In March, Newsweek reported that a video focusing on the “Brussels Attacks” was released by the pro-ISIS al-Battar Media Foundation. The nine-minute video shows images of Trump and uses an audio clip of Trump saying, “Brussels was one of the great, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, 20 years ago. It was amazing, actually, and safe. Now, it’s an absolute horror show.”
We now rate this claim — resurrected Wednesday night by Hutson — that ISIS used Trump in a propaganda video as true.
Trump’s foreign policy
Reality Check: Trump ‘abandoning’ U.S. allies
By Jamie Crawford, CNN National Security Producer
Kristen Kavanaugh, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and Marine Corps veteran, said Trump “suggests abandoning our closest allies.”
She was likely referring to a foreign policy that Trump outlined last week during an interview with The New York Times.
Throughout the course of his candidacy, Trump has questioned the forward deployment of troops overseas in Europe and Asia and said it would be cheaper for the U.S. taxpayer to deploy American military assets domestically as opposed to its current global configuration.
And in comments that ignited a firestorm in foreign policy circles during the Times interview, Trump suggested the United States should reconsider its trans-Atlantic security relationship, saying if he were president, the United States wouldn’t defend NATO allies like the Baltic states against Russian aggression if they haven’t “fulfilled their obligation to us.”
Those comments aligned with Trump’s past statements that a majority of the 28 nations that comprise the Atlantic alliance are not making the requisite financial commitments to NATO for their common defense, and that “the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”
But in the same New York Times interview, Trump said that he “would prefer to be able to continue” existing international agreements and did not necessarily want to abrogate existing agreements right away, but noted that “this is not 40 years ago,” and suggested the expenditures required for maintaining the current international order did not “sound very smart to me.”
Trump has criticized the United States commitment to the collective self-defense charter of NATO by raising the specter of not backing those countries in the alliance if they do not pay what is expected of them. He has also criticized treaties the United States has with allies like Japan and South Korea that would require U.S. military involvement if either country were attacked without a reciprocal requirement if the United States were attacked.
He has, however, called for a re-enforcement of the alliance with Israel.
Trump has never explicitly called for “abandoning” America’s closest allies. But because his recent comments could be seen as a call for rethinking alliances, we rate Kavanaugh’s comments as mostly true.
Tax returns
Reality Check: Candidates releasing tax returns
By Amy Gallagher, CNN
Kaine called Trump onto the carpet for failing to release his tax returns. “Does anybody else here think that Donald Trump should release his tax returns like every other presidential candidate in modern history?” Kaine asked the audience.
Although we have become accustomed in recent decades to presidential candidates releasing their tax returns, the development is relatively recent in our history. In fact, Franklin Roosevelt never released his taxes while he was in office. It was only after Roosevelt, with Harry Truman, that presidents began to release the tax returns they filed while in the White House. So just how far back does the tradition of presidential candidates releasing tax returns go? And has every presidential candidate since then released his or her returns?
In 2012, when pressure was on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, Joseph Thorndike of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts traced the origins of this tradition to Richard Nixon’s campaign speech in 1952, when he was Dwight Eisenhower’s vice presidential nominee. In a well-covered speech, he called on then-Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson and his running mate, Sen. John Sparkman, to release “financial statements.”
Stevenson and his running mate upped the ante by releasing financial statements along with their tax returns. While Nixon and Eisenhower did not follow suit, the Republicans went on to win the election. Later, while in office, Nixon’s 1973 tax return was investigated by Congress over a questionable donation to a charity and he was found to owe $476,431 in back taxes.
There is a tendency in the media to say that it was after Nixon and Watergate that candidates began to release their tax returns during their campaigns, but that is not the case. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter did not release tax returns while running for office, only summary data about their returns, though Carter’s 1975 taxes came to light later when he was audited during his presidency.
It wasn’t until after the Ethics in Government Act was passed in 1978, requiring candidates to file a financial statement, that many candidates began to release their tax returns during the campaign. It is interesting to note that once presidents began releasing their tax returns, the incumbents running for re-election were better known financially to the public. This, in turn, seems to have put pressure on challengers to release their returns.
So Ronald Reagan appears to be the first after Stevenson to release tax returns while campaigning. He grudgingly released his 1979 returns after his nomination in 1980, which could then be laid alongside Carter’s returns from the same year, released while he was in office.
In the next election cycle, the pressure was already on for the challenger, Walter Mondale, and his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, to release their tax returns. A controversy arose when Ferraro’s husband did not want to release his tax returns.
So it seems that the balance did tip somewhere between 1978 and 1984 from it being a voluntary show of transparency by a candidate to an expectation by the media and the public. So much so that when Jeb Bush entered the presidential race, he released a record 33 years of tax returns, seeming to reveal not only his financial forthrightness but also that he had kept all his tax returns with the idea in mind that he might someday run for president.
We rate this claim true because disclosure of tax returns has been customary for the past 36 years.
Mike Pence
Reality Check: Mike Pence’s record
By Lisa Rose, CNN
Stephanie Schriock, president of the pro-abortion rights political action committee, Emily’s List, said a Trump-Pence administration would roll back women’s rights, criminalizing abortion and slashing reproductive health funding. She called the Republican ticket “dangerous,” referring to Trump’s controversial remarks about women and Pence’s legislative record.
“They’ve nominated a man who said women should be punished for having an abortion, said, ‘putting a wife to work is a dangerous thing,’ called us ‘fat pigs’ and ‘animals,'” Schriock said. “He picked a running mate who led the fight to destroy Planned Parenthood, tried to redefine rape, suggested that mothers who work ‘stunt the emotional growth’ of their kids by putting them in daycare.”
Schriock accurately quoted Trump — although he did walk back his statement about punishing women who get abortions — so we’ll dig into her claims about Pence.
Pence is hardly the first conservative lawmaker to target Planned Parenthood, but he made headlines in 2011 when he nearly caused a government shutdown by attaching a rider defunding the group to a general budget resolution. Pence’s measure ultimately failed, and a last-minute deal was brokered to avert a shutdown. While Pence is a vocal opponent of Planned Parenthood, Schriock gives him too much credit by identifying him as the person who has led the fight against the abortion provider. Legislators have been trying to defund the group since the 1970s, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute, a left-leaning think tank. We rate this part of her claim mostly true.
But Schriock omitted some crucial context when she claimed that Pence tried to “redefine rape.” In 2010, Pence co-sponsored a bill restricting federally-funded abortion access for sexual assault victims with language that allowed for exemptions only in cases of “forcible rape.”
The language stirred up confusion, as people questioned whether the exemption would include victims of statutory rape or date rape. The bill, called the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, got rewritten and the term “forcible” was removed. The rewritten version passed the House but died in the Senate. Pence was one of 186 bipartisan co-sponsors for the bill, which was introduced by Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, and Rep. Dan Lapinski, D-Illinois.
Again, Schriock overstated her case. Pence did not spearhead an effort to redefine rape. He cosponsored an anti-abortion measure that contained language ending government funding for the procedure in some cases of sexual assault. Our verdict is true, but misleading.
Lastly, Schriock quoted a snippet from a 1997 letter to the editor that Pence sent to the Indianapolis Star. He wrote the letter in the response to an article about a government study that concluded sending kids to daycare does not negatively impact their cognitive development. He wrote that the article overlooked one of the study’s findings — that some children who attend daycare appear to display less affection towards their mothers. He used this as a jumping off point to argue that “daycare kids get the short end of the emotional stick” and he advocated tax breaks that would enable one parent to stay at home with young kids.
Schriock didn’t technically misquote Pence but she made a sweeping statement without providing the full context. We rate the final part of her claim true, but misleading.
LGBT rights
Reality Check: Economic effects of North Carolina bathroom bill
By Jasmine Lee, CNN
Raleigh technology entrepreneur Brooks Bell said she was “terrified” about what might happen for young entrepreneurs like herself if a Trump presidency were to happen.
During her speech, she talked about North Carolina’s passage of the controversial Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, also known as HB2, and the “dramatic effects” it has on the state economy.
“I watched a large company cancel their expansion, taking 400 good jobs with them,” Bell said. “Two influential technology investors immediately banned investments in our state. The NBA just pulled the All-Star Game out of town. The total economic cost is already $190 million dollars and counting.”
She continued by noting that Pence signed a similar “discriminatory bill” into Indiana law.
Bell’s claim about the bill’s effect on the state’s economy is true.
The NBA said in a statement that it would be moving its 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte because of the “climate created by HB2.”
PayPal planned to open a facility in Charlotte but later canceled its plans in April which would have employed 400 people. PayPal’s CEO Dan Schulman said in a statement the North Carolina law “perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture.”
Deutsche Bank also halted its plans to bring 250 new jobs to Cary, North Carolina.
An opinion article written by Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post cites the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, which estimated the law could cost the state nearly $600 million in private-sector economic activity.
Verdict: True.
Swing votes
Reality Check: The Asian-American swing vote
By Ali Foreman, CNN
Heading into a particularly contentious election, New York Rep. Grace Meng assured voters, “Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders can make the difference.” She said the group’s voting power had “doubled over the last decade” and claimed the bloc had ownership of the swing votes in Virginia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Meng’s first assertion that Asian-American and Pacific Islanders’ (AAPI) voting power has grown considerably in recent years is true. The latest Asian-American Voter Survey — conducted by a conglomerate of AAPI political organizations — highlights the growth of the AAPI population as well as an increase in registered AAPI voters. From 2000 to 2012, the number of AAPI voters increased from 2 million to 3.9 million. By 2025, the group is projected to make up 5% of voters nationwide.
While Asian-American voters play an increasingly important role in national politics, Meng’s declaration that they will decide three major swing states in the 2016 presidential race is an overstatement.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Virginia’s population is 6.6% AAPI, Nevada’s population is slightly higher at 9.3% and Pennsylvania only has 3.5%. These groups are influential, but assuming a voter turnout matching those numbers is optimistic.
For this reason, concerted efforts have been made to encourage AAPI voter participation in swing states. The AAPI Victory Fund has pledged $2 million to register at least 50,000 voters before Election Day and Clinton has made concerted attempts to court AAPI voters since primary season.
However, according to The Washington Post, many AAPI people remain reluctant to vote — facing “obstacles to political involvement.” For first-generation AAPI immigrants, these hurdles often include “concentration on moving up economically, poor English skills, unfamiliarity with the American political system and reluctance to invite public scrutiny.”
More importantly, AAPI groups aren’t the only ones at play in battleground states. Continued competition for other minority group support and evolving debates on critical policy issues could greatly influence outcomes in Virginia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Meng’s claim is incorrect, but AAPI voters could still play a pivotal role in electing her candidate of choice. Clinton is scoring favorably with AAPI voters across the nation. The Asian-American Voter Survey indicates this may be a result of Trump’s rhetoric; the survey asked participants “If a political candidate expressed strongly anti-immigrant views, but you agreed with him or her on other issues, would you still vote for that candidate, or would you vote for someone else?” A reported 41% of Asian-American registered voters would give their support to a different candidate.
Our verdict: Meng’s assertion that voting power for Asian-American and Pacific Islander has doubled in the past decade is true. Her claim that AAPI voters can claim ownership of the swing vote in Virginia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, however, is false. A swing vote — yes. The swing vote — no.
Military
Reality Check: Trump firing reservists
By Chip Grabow, CNN
Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, who also served in the Marine Corps, went after Trump’s remarks of some in the U.S. military. Gallego said, “When it comes to honoring the service of our troops, reservists have said Trump’s businesses fired them for missing work because of their duties. That’s not just illegal, it’s immoral.”
A federal law, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, does protect the rights of veterans, including reservists and guardsmen who are on active duty, to return to work after military service. Employers must treat days missed due to deployment as days worked. Those days cannot be used against vacation time.
So, did Trump’s companies ever fire reservists?
Corinne Sommer, an Iraq war veteran claimed she was fired in 2007 by Trump’s real estate seminar business, Trump University. Sommer sued Trump University and reached a confidential settlement. She later said she was let go because she needed two days a month off to serve in the Army Reserve.
That detail came from a 2012 deposition she provided in a federal class action suit accusing the school of fraud. In that deposition, Sommer also alleged that, within a poor performance review she received, “They wrote it was an issue that I was in the military.” She said she was fired after returning from vacation she had refused to cut short after being called to come into work.
Jill Martin, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said they couldn’t comment on reasons for an employee’s dismissal, but Martin did point to Sommer’s poor performance review; the vacation she took which Martin said was “unauthorized,” and her refusal to return to work. Martin also said Sommer’s claim she was fired due to her service in the military was “completely meritless.”
Another reservist, Richard Wright, a senior master sergeant in the Air Force Reserve, returned from his deployment in Afghanistan in 2007 only to be fired from his job with the Trump Institute, a real estate seminar business which is a licensee of Trump University. Wright was hired in 2006 as a “mentor,” someone who phoned clients who purchased “memberships” with the Trump Institute to provide advice about real estate investing.
Two months after starting, Wright was called up for active duty in Afghanistan. Upon his return, he’d requested two days of personal leave to adjust to civilian life and to do laundry. Wright said his boss told him, “All of your absences” had forced them to “re-evaluate your position with” the company, according to The Huffington Post. His boss also wrote: “I find it insulting that you would make a request to be paid for time you did not work and/or personal time you did not earn.” Wright said he didn’t think the comments were appropriate and that he didn’t appreciate being spoken to that way. His boss wrote back: “You needn’t be offended by my remarks, your employment is hereby terminated,” according to The Huffington Post.
The next year, Wright sued the Trump Institute and its parent company for wrongful termination under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. The two parties reached a settlement. When The Huffington Post asked the Trump Organization about the incident, Alan Garten, the general counsel for Trump Organization, provided this statement: “The Trump Institute was a licensee of Trump University and was not owned or controlled by Mr. Trump or any of his companies,” Garten said.
“As such, Mr. Trump had nothing whatsoever to do with the employment of any of the Trump Institute’s employees or mentors, had no involvement in the development or enforcement of any of the Trump Institute’s employment policies and has no knowledge of this matter,” Garten continued. “Mr. Trump has always been a great supporter of the men and women who have served in this country’s armed forces and has devoted much of his campaign to improving the lives of veterans.”
It’s true the two former employees sued Trump University and the Trump Institute, respectively, for wrongful termination and settled. Because details of the settlements are confidential, it’s impossible to know if they were fired specifically for their service in the military. For that reason, our verdict is it’s complicated.